This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.
The Periclean Building Program
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En provenance du cours de Wesleyan University
The Ancient Greeks
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"The Great 50 Years" (ca. 480-431 BCE)
Module 5 surveys the period between the end of the Persian Wars and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, which came to be known as Athens’ “Golden Age.” After the Persian Wars, there grew an alliance of Greek states that was meant to maintain security. The allies asked the Athenians to lead the confederation, called the Delian League. We will examine how the league was gradually transformed into an empire dominated by Athens. We will also discuss the extraordinary Pericles, who was a leader in the expansionist Athenian democracy and shaped many of its policies. In addition we will pay some overdue attention to the role of women in Greek society, with a consideration of the character of Antigone and a more general assessment of women’s status. We will conclude with an – again, too brief – account of the great building program that produced the Parthenon and the other renowned monuments on the Athenian Acropolis.
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Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
Classical Studies
When we spoke about Pericles, we talked about the mid century synthesis and this
fantasticc number of events that took place right around 450.
And one of the things that took place at the time was that the Athenians took 5,000
talents, an enormous amount of money, from the profits they had made from tribute,
and they devoted it to the beautification of the city.
This is a picture of what Athens looked like in 1869.
It doesn't look much like that now. Except of course, the Acropolis and the
Parthenon, thank goodness, are still there.
So, we have to remember that these buildings which have come down to us as
symbols of Athenian civilization were paid for by funds extracted from their fellow
Greeks. Just put that in at the beginning.
The Periclean building program had a number of different stages.
It actually began with the Parthenon but before we talk about the great temple,
let's talk about what's called the Propylaea.
This, again, in a photograph from about that same, from about 1869, was the great
ceremonial entryway to the Acropolis. Remember the Persians had sacked the city.
And the ruins had stayed there for now, well, almost 30 years as ruins.
And it was. Seemingly, at the instigation of Pericles,
that the Athenians took these funds and started to beautify the city.
There was, of course, some controversy. Some of Pericles' enemies accused him of
tricking Athens out with jewelry, as if she were a high-priced hetaira.
There's that word again. He wasn't deterred.
And this sacred gateway, the Propylaea, serves as a sort of boundary between the
secular world of the city and the largely sacred precinct on the top of the
Acropolis. It was beautifully designed and it had two
sort of waiting rooms, one of which even served as a sort of picture gallery, where
visitors could pause and look at some art before they went to the temples.
That's what it looked like then, this is pretty much what it looks like now, as
it's been reconstructed. It still get some sense of the
extraordinary grace of its proportions. But then, as now, the visitors' first
destination would have been the Parthenon, here again in another old photograph.
The Parthenon was the product of a number of different geniuses coming together.
The architect was a man named Iktinos, the sculptor was a man named Phidias, who was
said to be a personal friend of Pericles. And it is in what's called the Doric
style. That is to say, the columns rest directly
on this platform. And then, there is a sort of, there's
something like a little cushion at the top but it's fairly simple.
It's a substantial temple. It's quite big.
The long sides are about 70 meters and the shorter ends are about 31 meters across.
That is to say roughly, oh say, 228 feet by 101 feet.
And it is remarkably refined. It has come to be a truism that there is
no such thing as a straight line in the Parthenon.
Instead there is an extraordinarily sophisticated set of curvatures.
Even the stylobate which is this top course, rises at the center by a few
inches from the way it looked from where it winds up at the corners.
This has both a practical effect because it allows rain water to run off and it has
an aesthetic effect. Because from a distance, if it weren't
there, it might appear that the building was sort of bowing under its own weight.
Likewise, the columns, have an ever so slight bulge called an entasis in the
middle. Again, this now just for aesthetics, so
that they don't look hollowed out. And all of this was done, of course, far,
far, far, before the era of computer assisted design.
This was individuals with chisels and chalk and a great deal of labor, and we've
seen that before too. The Parthenon actually survived in fairly
good shape for a long time. It was turned, at one point, into a
Christian church. And then, after Greece came into the
Ottoman Empire, the Parthenon became a mosque.
But it's, it was kept relatively intact, until 1687 when there was a war between
the Ottomans and the Venetians, the Greeks or the Turks, the Ottomans who were
occupying the Acropolis at the time, used the Parthenon as a magazine, it took a
direct hit from a shell and was blown up. Parts of Parthenon were found as much as a
mile away. This is a very powerful explosion.
So, what we're seeing today is the ruin of, of what had, what had been for really
almost two millennium, as I said, relatively well preserved.
The building was, as I say, architecturally sophisticated to an almost
unimaginable degree, it was also richly ornamented in sculpture.
You have at either end what are called pediments, these triangular areas.
At the east, which was the front end of the building, although, not the first
thing one sees when one walks onto the Acropolis.
The east end, the pediment show the scene of the birth of Athena from the head of
Zeus. And on the west end, which is
reconstructed here, it showed the contest between Athena and Poseidon.
To become the presiding divinity of Athens.
It's worth noting that the Parthenon was brightly painted.
This might come as a surprise to you. But in the extremely bright light of
ancient Greece you had to have this vivid color to show up at all.
And I'm showing you this particular slide because it gives you a hint of what the
corner of one pediment looked like. And also, on all sides of the building
were these square panels in high relief that are called metopes.
And they showed scenes of mythical struggle combat on one side versus
amazons, versus giants, or Greeks versus centaurs, the Lapiths versus the barbarous
Centaurs, who invaded a wedding feast. So, the idea that there's some sort of
struggle going on is something that we, as visitors, would have seen from the very
beginning. But the high point, if one can put it that
way, of the sculptural decoration was the so-called Parthenon Frieze.
About a meter high, it ran around the interior of the building, up high, and was
several hundred feet in length, about 80% of it has been preserved.
Much of it was taken away to England in 1801 by Lord Elgin, and the fragments now
reside in the British Museum, where they are called the Elgin Marbles.
The general understanding of this frieze, which has hundreds of figures in it, is
that it is an idealized representation of the Panathenaic procession, that great
festival for all Athenians. And it shows riders mounted on their
horses, perhaps these are the hippes, you know those, the knights, the higher social
order. It also shows figures leading heifers or
cattle to be slaughtered in sacrifice at the festival.
It shows young women, in generally, high class, carrying baskets of offerings.
And it culminates at the east end in what is generally understood to be a scene from
the Panathenaea, in which women and a girl are folding the peplos which is a sacred
gown that was woven. And the girls of Athens, the upper class
girls, would weave a new cloak for the statue of Athena, and it is generally
understood that that's what's happening here.
Although, there have been other interpretations offered recently.
Like I said, I'm just giving you what is most broadly accepted.
What is in controvertible, however, is that at the end as well, next to that
scene, is a banquet of the gods. You can tell that they're gods, because
they're much bigger. If they stood up, they would tower over
the human figures next to them, these are generally identified as the messenger god,
Iris, who's a little bit smaller. But Hera and Zeus as well.
And as a demonstration of Athenian civic pride, you know, that we put ourselves
there next to the gods celebrating ourselves together, I think it's pretty
hard to beat. There's also in the, there was, in the
center of the sanctuary, a massive, golden ivory statue of our patron divinity.
This is a replica which is in the American city of Nashville where there is a full
size scale model of the Parthenon. I just wanted to show you what this might
have looked like, this is done with tremendous archaeological and artistic
care, it's not gold and ivory, unfortunately, but may give you some idea.
Of the Goddess who inhabited and presided over this temple that was quite literally
at the pinnacle of Athenian life. There are other temples as well that came
to be built, somewhat later. Just after Pericles died, there is a
little temple built also to Athena and this is called the temple of Athena Nike
or Athena the goddess of victory. It too had a sculptural relief along the
top, although, much smaller, which also showed conflict, but this is Greeks versus
Persians, so this is historical, rather than mythical.
And then, still later, starting in about 421, there was another shrine built called
the Erechtheion . It's a very complicated temple with
shrines to multiple divinities including Athena, Zeus, Poseidon and the eponymous,
the founder of Athens, called Erechtheus. And one of its most famous features is the
porch of the maidens, the so called Caryatid Porch.
And here, you see, a 19th century, a visitor, at that time there were many
fewer than there are today. And what he's doing is sketching and we
can tell it from the angle of his view that what he's sketching is the Parthenon.
Because these buildings all together have come to represent in the imagination of
the world, Athens, or even more broadly, Greek civilization.
And you can see how they bring together so many of the things that we've been talking
about. Civic pride, the collaboration of
different classes. We have, incidentally, the construction
records for the Erechtheion, and they show that citizens and foreign workers worked
side by side and were paid at the same rate for the same kind of work.
So, this is Panathenaic as well and has since become, as I've said, a world
cultural property.
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